One long commute: Nova Scotia to Dauphin Island

A 2,600-mile road trip might discourage a reluctant tourist, but for artist Jaye Ouellette and her husband, Doug Stensrud, it is all about the destination. For the past two seasons their destination has been Dauphin Island, which the couple call home four months out of the year.

The drive from their home in Nova Scotia is not as grueling as it sounds, according to Ouellette. Doug is an excellent driver, and they travel in a Chevy half-ton, more than suitable for hauling people and possessions.

Besides, Stensrud is no stranger to lengthy drives. He has traversed the vastness of Canada, and in 1980 he and a friend drove a ¤’68 Camaro from Canada to Florida, straight across the South to California and up into Alberta. Call it the “North American Loop” — about twice as far as the drive from Nova Scotia to Dauphin Island.

He and Ouellette make this annual journey in less than a week. The trip provides ample scenery from Maine to the Gulf Coast, plenty of together-time — and the payoff is Dauphin Island, which they love.

One of the perks in coming to the Mobile area is that Ouellette has new venues for her distinctive artwork. Robertson Gallery in downtown Mobile is currently showing her acrylic ocean paintings.

She also does figurative works, photography, sculpture and stained glass. Her Web site is www.jaye.ca.

Not surprisingly, what set all this in motion was the weather: There is a reason Canada is known as the “Great White North.”

“The summer before last I was like, ‘I don’t want to live here for another winter!’ My whole life, every winter,” Ouellette says. “In Canada it was snow, and I was just tired of it. I started looking around in Florida and it wasn’t clicking. Somebody from South Carolina said, ‘How about Alabama?’ I kinda went, ‘Really?’ I didn’t even realize it touched the Gulf.”

Ouellette says her friend mentioned Fairhope, which from her Web search she found interesting and beautiful.

“Then I stumbled onto Dauphin Island,” she says. “We rented a cottage, packed up our truck and headed down. We packed in howling snowstorm mid-December. This year we decided to leave a little early — and we still packed in a howling snowstorm.”

Except for “a couple of wacky drivers in Tennessee,” the trip was uneventful. Stensrud says they follow a somewhat diagonal route that takes them through Maine, new Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and down to Knoxville, Tenn. From Knoxville, it’s an easy drive to the Gulf Coast.

They are accompanied by their Shelby, a faithful companion and fellow traveler. Ouellette says she and Stensrud were stopped at a gas station six years ago when another motorist handed her the leash and said, “Here, you want her?” The stranger then went back to his car and started to drive away.

“At least tell us her name!” Ouellette shouted.

The driver yelled back “Shelby!” — at least, that’s what it sounded like, according to Stensrud.

Jaye Ouellette with her artwork, acrylic on board, at Robertson Gallery in downtown Mobile. (Press-Register/Mike Kittrell)

Ouellette and Stensrud live in Arasaig (the Gaelic spelling of Arisaig), a small village in Antigonish County, Nova Scotia. Arasaig is on the north coast of the eastern mainland on the Northumberland Strait, and is connected to the town of Antigonish to the southeast and to New Glasgow to the west.

Doug grew up in New Glasgow, even though his people are Norwegian. That makes him something of a rarity among the heavily Scottish population.

“My name didn’t begin with a ‘Mc’ or a ‘Mac,’” he says with a laugh.

He and Ouellette moved to Nova Scotia about eight years ago and they like the people of their remote village. They say the Alabamians they’ve met are strikingly similar to the folks in Nova Scotia.

On a cool, sunny morning at Robertson Gallery, Doug is wearing a windbreaker that bears the logo “La Femme Nikita,” a reminder of the Canadian TV series from the 1990s for which he built sets. He has been a carpenter in the Canadian film and television industry for more than 20 years. He and Ouellette met on the set of “Top Cops,” a popular reality series on which she painted sets.

It was, like most technical work for movies and TV, intense and exhausting. Jaye says she once logged a 112-hour week. Nothing “glam” about those hours.

Their four-month hiatus on the beaches of Dauphin Island is an opportunity to re-charge and prepare themselves for their busy schedules back in Canada. Doug still works in film and TV, even though he is an accomplished musician; Jaye says she hasn’t had to work a “real job” in 13 years, although a large commission awaits her when she returns to Nova Scotia.

Artwork by Jaye Ouellette, who lives and works in Nova Scotia but travels to Dauphin Island each year. (Press-Register/Mike Kittrell)

“It’s a triptych with each panel eight by 19 feet,” she says. “I’ll be doing studies when I get back.”

It will be Jaye’s first opportunity to work in the new studio that her husband constructed for her before they left for Alabama. She is a self-taught artist who works in a variety of media, from acrylics to photography and sculpture. On the couple’s second trip to Dauphin Island, she brought artwork in hopes of finding a gallery show.

She and Doug were driving past Robertson Gallery and stopped for a visit. Ouellette says she walked in and met gallery manager Trent McGuire Bullis, who liked her work and called later to schedule an exhibit.

“That never happens,” says the artist, who is showing 10 large paintings and eight smaller ones. She sold two works during the Jan. 14 artwalk.

Reaction to her work was gratifying, according to Ouellette. So was Artwalk attendance on a chilly night, says Bullis. More than a hundred visitors came to Robertson Gallery that evening.

“When I left Toronto, if somebody had said, ‘You’re going to start painting ocean paintings — I like the term ‘seascapes’ — I would’ve said, ‘You’re nuts.’ At that time I was painting ‘my girls,’” she says, referring to her nude paintings.

“And here I am. I just can’t help but be affected — I’m taking pictures of waves, the water and clouds and constantly looking at it.”

It is remarkable that Ouellette is able to paint at all. A few years ago she was diagnosed with ocular histoplasmosis, which is caused by an airborne fungus inhaled in the lungs. She is legally blind in one eye, and her other eye is affected.

For a time she says she stopped painting and basically “curled up in a fetal position.” However, she says couldn’t not work.

She has thrown herself, body and soul, into creating new work, and she sees her condition in a new light.

“You know what? If it hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t be here,” she says. “I would not have come to Dauphin Island or moved to Nova Scotia. So it’s weird, as devastating as it was, how many good positive things have come from it.”

She points to her artwork on the gallery walls. “I probably wouldn’t have been painting all this.”

Doug nods and says, “You just learn to deal with it. It’s like you have to, so you do.”